KEY ISSUES

We believe that we all want neighborhoods where our children feel safe and healthy. Ensuring that we are all safe in the 26th Ward means that we must address the root causes of crime.
• Investing in our young people through culturally competent afterschool programs and providing living wage jobs to help bring peace to our streets
• Supporting funding mental health resources and reopening closed public mental health clinics.
• Becoming a champion of Treatment not Trauma
• Supporting increased funding for community direct service organizations to receive more support as they do public safety work in our district through a restorative and healing-centered lens.

We believe that we have an active role in this seat to make sure that our neighbors and our community can continue to live in the 26th Ward. Gentrification, segregation, and displacement are changing the face of who we can call residents and neighbors. We need solutions that actively tackle these issues not just for the present, but in perpetuity to make sure everyone that wishes to live in the Ward can call it their home.
• Creating a community zoning process.
• Advocating to increase housing options in the ward to grow affordable options available to community members.
• Advocating to increase affordable homeownership opportunities in the 26th ward.
• Supporting rent control for the entire state to tackle the displacement of our friends and family in the 26th ward due to the cost burden and reduction in affordable options.

We believe in the power of entrepreneurship to uplift our communities and create generational wealth. Small businesses provide our residents with jobs and opportunity; they are the lifeblood of our local economy. Our small businesses must be supported through and beyond Covid Recovery with additional resources to ensure they are here to stay and avoid displacement.
• Advocating for culturally competent lending practices and working with financial institutions committed to lending to disadvantaged groups to increase financial literacy and access to capital.
• Reducing the number of commercial vacancies in Humboldt Park.
• Increasing outdoor placemaking, outdoor dining, and outdoor public art.
• Advocating for streetscape beautification resources.
• Creating a 26th Ward small business resource hub for small businesses to stay up to date on grants and other support.
• Advocating for an increase in funding for small business support programs and grants aimed at helping women and Latino-owned businesses start or grow their businesses.

We believe that many young people, including Jessie Fuentes, are failed by the Chicago Public School system due to lack of funding and punitive policies. We believe in fully funding our neighborhood public schools and ensuring every child has access to the staff and resources necessary to thrive in the classroom and in life.
• Fighting for equitable dollars for our public schools and taking on the antiquated funding models that keep our schools underfunded and shutting down as families leave our neighborhood to due gentrification.
• Fighting to undo zero-tolerance policies that create the school-to-prison pipeline.
• Supporting public school teachers and the additional staff our children need to be healthy, safe, and well.
• Supporting funding for a culturally and linguistically sound curriculum that encourages young people to become agents of change.
• Supporting funding for additional staff to develop and sustain restorative justice and healing-centered systems for all students.

Building community, Breaking barriers.